Gunshot wounds to the elbow.
Gunshot wound injuries to the elbow are rare. This article presents the experience of the King/Drew Medical Center. Classification and management of these injuries are emphasized. An algorithm is presented.
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Gunshot wound injuries to the elbow are rare. This article presents the experience of the King/Drew Medical Center. Classification and management of these injuries are emphasized. An algorithm is presented.
OBJECTIVES: The distinction between the two major forms of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), i.e., ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease is sometimes difficult and may lead to a diagnosis of indeterminate colitis. We have used 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) combined with multivariate methods of spectral data analysis to differentiate UC from Crohn's disease and to evaluate normal-appearing mucosa in IBD. METHODS: Colon mucosal biopsies (45 UC and 31 Crohn's disease) were submitted to 1H MRS, and multivariate analysis was applied to distinguish the two diseases. A second study was performed to test endoscopically and histologically normal biopsies from IBD patients. A classifier was developed by training on 101 spectra (76 inflamed IBD tissues and 25 normal control tissues). The spectra of 38 biopsies obtained from endoscopically and histologically normal areas of the colons of patients with IBD were put into the validation test set. RESULTS: The classification accuracy between UC and Crohn's disease was 98.6%, with only one case of Crohn's disease and no cases of UC misclassified. The diagnostic spectral regions identified by our algorithm included those for taurine, lysine, and lipid. In the second study, the classification accuracy between normal controls and IBD was 97.9%. Only 47.4% of the endoscopically and histologically normal IBD tissue spectra were classified as true normals; 34.2% showed "abnormal" magnetic resonance spectral profiles, and the remaining 18.4% could not be classified unambiguously. CONCLUSIONS: There is a strong potential for MRS to be used in the accurate diagnosis of indeterminate colitis; it may also be sensitive in detecting preclinical inflammatory changes in the colon.
Computer-assisted classification of disease has largely relied upon testing the diagnostic algorithm in the same population from which it was originally derived, as a means of validation. To evaluate the accuracy of a diagnostic program in which discriminant function analysis is used, we applied it to a separate population, selected by different criteria from those used to define the original case material on which the diagnostic program was based. We selected a group of 315 patients having abnormal values for alkaline phosphatase, bilirubin, or aspartate aminotransferase for further biochemical and immunological investigations. We used a computer program involving discriminant function analysis and classification procedures primed with the results of 10 tests obtained on each of 535 patients in a previous series to allocate those 173 new patients who had diseases of the liver or biliary tree into one of 13 disease groups. The classification was less accurate than was the case in previous cross-validation studies. We developed new discriminants with the new case material, using the same group of tests, and when cross-validation was performed, overall accuracy was greatly improved. These experiences point to the powerful influence of group selection upon computer-assisted diagnostic procedures, and the hazards of applying to one clinical population discriminant functions derived from a different population.
The use of neural networks in medicine is concentrated mainly on classification purposes. In particular, neural networks applications in spectroscopy are discussed, where this approach offers powerful algorithmic tools for interpretation of spectral data and elucidation of chemical structure of compounds. Neural networks are effective also for the classification and prediction of chemical reactivity and structure of proteins and also for QSAR and QSRR studies. At present the most successful use of neural networks in clinical medicine is image analysis and analysis of wave forms--ECG or EEG pattern recognition and classification and partly also clinical diagnosis and prognosis. (Tab. 7, Fig. 2, Ref. 170.)
Structure and content of atherosclerotic plaque varies between patients and may be indicative of their risk for embolisation. This study aimed to construct parametric images of B-scan texture and assess their potential for predicting plaque morphology. Sequential transverse in vitro scans of 10 carotid plaques, excised during endarterectomy, were compared with macrohistology maps of plaque content. Multidiscriminant analysis combined the output of 157 statistical and textural algorithms into five separate texture classes, displayed as ultrasound (US) texture classification images (UTCI). Visual comparison between corresponding UTCI and histology maps found the five texture classes matched with the location of fibrin, elastin, calcium, haemorrhage or lipid. However, histology preparation removes calcium and lipid and, so, can affect the structural integrity of atherosclerotic plaques. Soft tissue regions smaller than the UTCI kernel, (0.87 mm x 0.85 mm x 3.9 mm), such as blood clots, are also difficult to detect by UTCI. These factors demonstrate limitations in the use of histology as a "gold standard" for US tissue characterisation.
This article uses the Adaptive Gaussian Representation (AGR) for human electroencephalogram (EEG) feature extraction aiming the discrimination among mental tasks to be used in a brain computer interface (BCI). It does not focus on the AGR time-frequency representation, but rather on their projection coefficients. Ten volunteers were asked to imagine either right or left hand movement, according to a proper visual stimulus. The features of the resulting EEG signals were characterised by extracting AGR coefficients. Classification was carried out using a Multilayer perceptron (MLP) trained with the classical backpropagation algorithm. Overall results show that AGR coefficients representation is able to reveal a significant EEG discrimination between imagination of right and left hand movement with a mean classification performance of 91%+/-5.8% achieved for female subjects and 87%+/-5.0% achieved for male subjects.
While genomic sequences are accumulating, finding the location of the genes remains a major issue that can be solved only for about a half of them by homology searches. Prediction methods are thus required, but unfortunately are not fully satisfying. Most prediction methods implicitly assume a unique model for genes. This is an oversimplification as demonstrated by the possibility to group coding sequences into several classes in Escherichia coli and other genomes. As no classification existed for Arabidopsis thaliana, we classified genes according to the statistical features of their coding sequences. A clustering algorithm using a codon usage model was developed and applied to coding sequences from A. thaliana, E. coli, and a mixture of both. By using it, Arabidopsis sequences were clustered into two classes. The CU1 and CU2 classes differed essentially by the choice of pyrimidine bases at the codon silent sites: CU2 genes often use C whereas CU1 genes prefer T. This classification discriminated the Arabidopsis genes according to their expressiveness, highly expressed genes being clustered in CU2 and genes expected to have a lower expression, such as the regulatory genes, in CU1. The algorithm separated the sequences of the Escherichia-Arabidopsis mixed data set into five classes according to the species, except for one class. This mixed class contained 89 % Arabidopsis genes from CU1 and 11 % E. coli genes, mostly horizontally transferred. Interestingly, most genes encoding organelle-targeted proteins, except the photosynthetic and photoassimilatory ones, were clustered in CU1. By tailoring the GeneMark CDS prediction algorithm to the observed coding sequence classes, its quality of prediction was greatly improved. Similar improvement can be expected with other prediction systems.
When faced with a patient with acute chest pain, clinicians must distinguish myocardial infarction (MI) from all other causes of acute chest pain. If MI is suspected, current therapeutic practice includes deciding whether to administer thrombolysis or primary percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty and whether to admit patients to a coronary care unit. The former decision is based on electrocardiographic (ECG) changes, including ST-segment elevation or left bundle-branch block, the latter on the likelihood of the patient's having unstable high-risk ischemia or MI without ECG changes. Despite advances in investigative modalities, a focused history and physical examination followed by an ECG remain the key tools for the diagnosis of MI. The most powerful features that increase the probability of MI, and their associated likelihood ratios (LRs), are new ST-segment elevation (LR range, 5.7-53.9); new Q wave (LR range, 5.3-24.8); chest pain radiating to both the left and right arm simultaneously (LR, 7.1); presence of a third heart sound (LR, 3.2); and hypotension (LR, 3.1). The most powerful features that decrease the probability of MI are a normal ECG result (LR range, 0.1-0.3), pleuritic chest pain (LR, 0.2), chest pain reproduced by palpation (LR range, 0.2-0.4), sharp or stabbing chest pain (LR, 0.3), and positional chest pain (LR, 0.3). Computer-derived algorithms that depend on clinical examination and ECG findings might improve the classification of patients according to the probability that an MI is causing their chest pain.
The effective management of paranasal sinus aspergillosis requires early diagnosis, histological classification, surgery and where appropriate, chemotherapy. Fungal sinusitis may be easily missed unless a high index of suspicion is maintained and specific culture and histology requested. The disease is classified into invasive and noninvasive types, each being divided into two subgroups: invasive aspergillosis may be either fulminant or indolent and noninvasive disease localized or allergic. The literature is reviewed and an algorithmic approach to aspergillus sinusitis proposed. The importance of histologically differentiating invasive from noninvasive aspergillosis prior to selecting the appropriate treatment options is stressed. CT scan should precede definitive surgery, and be used in follow-up. Close and prolonged follow-up is essential.
Dissatisfaction with Medicare's current system of paying for rehabilitation care has led to proposals for a rehabilitation prospective payment system, but first a classification system for rehabilitation patients must be created. Data for 36,980 patients admitted to and discharged from 125 rehabilitation facilities between January 1, 1990, and April 19, 1991, were provided by the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation. Classification rules were formed using clinical judgment and a recursive partitioning algorithm. The Functional Independence Measure version of the Function Related Groups (FIM-FRGs) uses four predictor variables: diagnosis leading to disability, admission scores for motor and cognitive functional status subscales as measured by the Functional Independence Measure, and patient age. The system contains 53 FRGs and explains 31.3% of the variance in the natural logarithm length of stay for patients in a validation sample. The FIM-FRG classification system is conceptually simple and stable when tested on a validation sample. The classification system contains a manageable number of groups, and may represent a solution to the problem of classifying medical rehabilitation patients for payment, facility planning, and research on the outcomes, quality, and cost of rehabilitation.
According to the statistical analysis, it is shown that the differences of the content of alpha-helix and beta-strand between alpha/beta and alpha+beta proteins are of statistical significance. Based on the secondary structure content and the percentage of parallel or anti-parallel strands, any mixed alphabeta protein can be represented by a point in a three-dimensional prism. The distribution of the mapping points for 79 mixed alphabeta proteins (domains), of which 26 are class alpha/beta and 53 are class alpha+beta, shows that the two kinds of points are situated at distinct regions roughly. A new quantitative criterion based on the Fisher discriminant algorithm is proposed to distinguish between the alpha/beta and alpha+beta proteins (domains). Of the 79 proteins 77 are correctly classified (97.5%). As a stringent cross-validation test, the jackknife test shows that of the 79 proteins 77 are correctly classified. The jackknife test accuracy is still 97.5%. These figures indicate the self-consistence and the extrapolating effectiveness of the new quantitative criterion. Applying the new criterion to reclassify the alpha/beta and alpha+beta proteins (domains) in SCOP is also discussed. It is hoped that the new quantitative criterion will be useful for the development of protein classification databases.
Potential indicators were assessed for the two classifications of protein-energy malnutrition in the guidelines for integrated management of childhood illness: severe malnutrition, which requires immediate referral to hospital, and very low weight, which calls for feeding assessment, nutritional counselling and follow-up. Children aged < 2 years require feeding assessment and counselling as a preventive intervention. For severe malnutrition, we examined 1202 children admitted to a Kenyan hospital for any association of the indicators with mortality within one month. Bipedal oedema indicating kwashiorkor, and two marasmus indicators (visible severe wasting and weight-for-height (WFH) Z-score of < -3) were associated with a significantly increased mortality risk (odds ratios, 3.1-3.9). Very low weight-for-age (WFA) (Z-score of < -4.4) was not associated with an increased risk of mortality. Because first-level health facilities generally lack length-boards, bipedal oedema and visible severe wasting were chosen as indicators of severe malnutrition. To assess potential WFA thresholds for the very low weight classification, our primary source of data came from 1785 Kenyan outpatient children, but we also examined data from surveys in Nepal, Bolivia, and Togo. We examined the performance of WFA at various thresholds to identify children with low WFH and, for children aged < or = 2 years, low height-for-age (HFA). Use of a WFA threshold Z-score of < -2 identified a considerable proportion of children (from 13% in Bolivia to 68% in Nepal) which, in most settings, would pose an enormous burden on the health facility. Among ill children in Kenya, a threshold WFA Z-score of < -3 had a sensitivity of 89-100% to detect children with WFH Z-scores of < -3, and, with an identification rate of 9%, would avoid overburdening the clinics. Potential modifications include use of a more restrictive cut-off in countries with high rates of stunting, or the elimination of the WFA screen in order to concentrate efforts on intervention for all children below the 2-year age cut-off. Key issues in every country include the capacity to provide counselling for many children and linkage to nutritional improvement programmes in the community.
We investigate the space of all protein sequences. We combine the standard measures of similarity (SW, FASTA, BLAST), to associate with each sequence an exhaustive list of neighboring sequences. These lists induce a (weighted directed) graph whose vertices are the sequences. The weight of an edge connecting two sequences represents their degree of similarity. This graph encodes much of the fundamental properties of the sequence space. We look for clusters of related proteins in this graph. These clusters correspond to strongly connected sets of vertices. Two main ideas underlie our work: i) Interesting homologies among proteins can be deduced by transitivity. ii) Transitivity should be applied restrictively in order to prevent unrelated proteins from clustering together. Our analysis starts from a very conservative classification, based on very significant similarities, that has many classes. Subsequently, classes are merged to include less significant similarities. Merging is performed via a novel two phase algorithm. First, the algorithm identifies groups of possibly related clusters (based on transitivity and strong connectivity) using local considerations, and merges them. Then, a global test is applied to identify nuclei of strong relationships within these groups of clusters, and the classification is refined accordingly. This process takes place at varying thresholds of statistical significance, where at each step the algorithm is applied on the classes of the previous classification, to obtain the next one, at the more permissive threshold. Consequently, a hierarchical organization of all proteins is obtained. The resulting classification splits the space of all protein sequences into well defined groups of proteins. The results show that the automatically induced sets of proteins are closely correlated with natural biological families and super families. The hierarchical organization reveals finer sub-families that make up known families of proteins as well as many interesting relations between protein families. The hierarchical organization proposed may be considered as the first map of the space of all protein sequences. An interactive web site including the results of our analysis has been constructed, and is now accessible through http:/(/)www.protomap.cs.huji.ac.il
The electrophoretic separation of protein variants having slightly different mobilities is a basic tool of biochemical population genetics. In certain situations it is difficult to determine how to classify the variants as alleles of a number of genetic loci, that is, as variant subsets within each of which the Mendelian laws hold. In this article, we develop and analyze a series of algorithms for solving various versions and generalizations of this problem of optimal classification.
Training probability-density estimating neural networks with the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm aims to maximize the likelihood of the training set and therefore leads to overfitting for sparse data. In this article, a regularization method for mixture models with generalized linear kernel centers is proposed, which adopts the Bayesian evidence approach and optimizes the hyperparameters of the prior by type II maximum likelihood. This includes a marginalization over the parameters, which is done by Laplace approximation and requires the derivation of the Hessian of the log-likelihood function. The incorporation of this approach into the standard training scheme leads to a modified form of the EM algorithm, which includes a regularization term and adapts the hyperparameters on-line after each EM cycle. The article presents applications of this scheme to classification problems, the prediction of stochastic time series, and latent space models.
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An Army corpsman used physician-written triage algorithms to rate the urgency of the chief complaints of 2,000 pediatric outpatients. His ratings agreed with subsequent ratings by physicians in 84% of cases. The corpsman assigned a higher care urgency classification in 15% of cases and a lower classification in only 1.2% of cases. No danger to patients resulted from the algorithm-directed screening. Use of a "nonprofessional" as a triage agent spares the pediatrician, pediatric nurse practitioner, and nurse for providing health care. With increasing use of acute care facilities by patients without appointments, physician-written algorithms allow triage agents who lack formal medical training to determine safely the need for care of patients.